For You I Promise
by Strigoi17
Summary: Love had never been a foreign, benign, or untouchable concept to N; and therefore, the idea that his love for Black would cause him to hate Pokémon was unreachable.


N Harmonia disliked many things.

He despised the dark rings below his eyes and the opaque sheen of his skin. The stringent tangles mangling his sage-green hair were the most salient vexations, and the grainy, belligerent voices of the humans around him were the most urgent aggravations.

N Harmonia liked many things, as well.

The tinkling chirrups and thundering howls of Pokémon thriving around him; the incandescent stars whispering above him.

And N loved Black.

He loved him.

N had never loved anything before.

There was nothing hindering his ability to do so; the thought had never bloomed in his mind that perhaps yes, he had been able to love something before, but in only dull, limp contrast to Black. The pristine teenager he'd stumbled into was seraphic, divine and extensively unreal. N – naïve and jaded at best – had lost sight of everything when he fumbled upon those brown eyes. His skin had kindled, ignited into the deepest of lusting curiosity.

Love had never been a foreign, benign, or untouchable concept to N; and therefore, the idea that his love for Black would cause him to hate Pokémon was unreachable.

It was storming.

Uncharacteristically so for the season and utterly terrifying for N. His hands – latched around Black's wrists – were trembling emphatically, the pearls of his knuckles white against his diaphanous skin.

Black's coos were half-swallowed by the wind and rain berating their tent, and his fingers smoothed out the tremors in his joints like heat against crushed velvet.

"N, it's okay…"

The elements were like looming, drooling beasts to N. They were oppressive and gruesome, far too much for a human to handle; and before a year ago, he hadn't once had to dodge their spiteful wrath.

"Don't be—"

Black's gentle reassurance was fissured by a shrill, extraterrestrial crackle.

It blended with a deafening, metallic crack of thunder, blended perfectly into the roaring of the storm but was precise and specific against the young trainer's ears.

_i"__Thunderus__**.**__"/i_

"N, I have to."

The jade eyes fell wide, and N shook his head fervently. "Black, you can't."

"I have to!"

He was rising, about to spring from their tent, when N pressed his untrimmed nails softly into his boyfriend's wrists. Black flinched visibly, let out a small murmur of pain, and protested, "N, please! I need to! I haven't ever seen Thunderus before now, and if I catch him, I'll complete the Pokedex!"

Black was anything if not ignorant; he understood plenty why N was afraid. He knew of the man's abhorrent and slightly unnecessary fears, and he accepted them.

But this is what he lived for. This is what he abandoned his mother and his home for; this is why he was huddled in a tent next to the man he unquestionably loved, and wasn't comatose, snug in the secure, uneventful warmth of a one-bedroom home.

"N, I'm sorry. I'll be back soon."

And he bolted.

The sky above him split into fragments of ghastly grey-black lined with thick, jagged lines of blinding white. The storm cadenced around him, beating his hair into his eyes and bludgeoning his exposed cheeks. His sneakers slipped against sleek, muddy ground, and his arms flailed about his sides in fluid, half-rhythmic strides. The speckles on his wrists where N's nails had begged him stung violently.

Upward he peered, yanking his chin toward the imperial creature causing first-hand the destruction and fear waltzing in the humid air around them. His heart rippled, desperately swift in his chest, and he fished in the bag safeguarding his team from the elements that so easily blinded him.

'Thundurus!"

"I'll get you!" Black gave a belated laugh through the deafening storm, and tossed out his first Pokeball.

"Go, Samurott!"

"ROOOOOOTT!"

Black's nature was timid; he was sculpted of stained glass and wax paper.

"I'll win!"

But when it involved a battle, Black was chiseled of stone. He was gallant, heroic – he was completely unstoppable.

"Samurott, use Razor Shell!"

Black's starter – his best friend and truest source of support – tore forward in the knife-edged storm, and with a vociferous squall he taffied the water plummeting down around him into a slender whip.

The wild Pokémon gave an ear-splitting guffaw, and charged forward. With a spasm of lightning that shone with defined lucidity through the storm, Thundurus shot a Thunder Bolt toward Black's Samurott.

Within seconds of harsh impact, Black's Pokemon fell; limp onto the watery ground.

"Samurott!"

The devastated cry ground his throat open and made him choke on the musty taste of rain waterfalling past his lips. He turned, frantic, and pawed blindly through his bag. His fingers slid without direction across potions and spare Great Balls. With a weak whimper, he gripped at a Pokeball at random. He spun on one heel and wound his arm backward to toss it toward the enemy, but as his foot cocked upward a sweep of wind barreled forward and knocked him off balance.

He tumbled backward, slapping his back hard onto the ground with a wet thud. The breath fluttered from his lungs and he gasped in buckets of rain. There he sprawled, numb and cold, and fought audaciously to scramble upward.

"Thundurus!"

Black couldn't breathe and he couldn't see. He writhed in the mud, the cold and wetness seeping through his clothes and gnawing at his skin. The Pokémon he sought to capture emerged from the chorusing rain and hovered dangerously above him.

Black was taking a very, very long time.

N wanted desperately to run, to bolt recklessly into the surfing wind and to save the trainer that was taking an atrociously long time.

However, N was afraid.

The tempest cawing outside of his tent was sinful, vile, and unapproachable. He was left shaking and terrified in his vinyl-stinking sanctuary, cemented in place by childish fear. Black was either stalling or strictly unable to come back inside, and N was hesitant to contemplate either option.

He rose on trembling legs. This would undoubtedly be hellish for him, be scarring and overtly cruel. Gulping down a breath swimming with garish spikes, N straightened his spine. He jerked one foot forward, and with a minute crumpling of plastic, walked from the tent.

The moment his foot hit natural ground, the rain above him stopped.

"…Black?"

N perused the now clear night in search of his boyfriend. With a slight quiver in his lip, he found him nowhere to be found.

Another step forward. He glanced upward to the sky, to the completely clear, cloudless night. Jade eyes probed for the visage of Thundurus, but in vain. He called out once again for Black, but was replied to by only the stone-hinged song of an unanswering night.

He nearly stomped on him.

The tip of his shoe kicked Black's shoulder when he swung his foot forward for another step. N's eyes fell down, toward what he assumed was a large rock or perhaps even a slumbering Pokémon.

N's lips fell painfully open, and with negligent abandon N lost his breath.

His hat had seagulled at least two feet away from the sixteen-year-old; his bag was slung tumultuously to his side. His clothes and skin had been charred the deepest, ugliest onyx, and his arms and legs were gathered defensively at his chest. What had once been the Champion of the Pokémon league – the sweetest, gentlest grip N had yet experienced or witnessed from a human - the most kindhearted brown eyes – was now the dilapidated, burned seed huddled lifelessly in the mud.

He collapsed, and his knees ate away at the weak mud beneath him. Hands numb with the after-effects of Thundurus's wrath, he stretched an arm outward; to the black skin of his beloved.

Black felt like gravel: coarse and dead. N's fingers brushed across the feeling, the hangover effects of Thundurus's attack.

Emotions were something N had never valued before. They were sincerely troublesome to his journey and inconvenient to modern-day life. Intrigue was his most useful virtue and pain was something he had only felt once. Disbelief, honestly, was never an option to N. What was in front of his eyes was very real.

But at the feel of Black's cheek beneath his fingers, N began to weep.

Black had morphed, in the infinitesimal gap of time within which he was battling the rogue, into the world around him. He was rock, sand, and the aftertaste of fire; denatured in front of him was the corpse of the boy he had loved like no other.

N was realistically afraid to grasp him. He wanted to clasp onto his narrow shoulders and yank him close to his chest, to breathe life into him and to grieve. N wanted to backpedal, to rewind time to that moment when Black stepped into a world too depraved and wretched.

N pulled back a hand blessed with royal blood, and as he did so charcoal-colored ash stained his fingers. He whispered his love's name and with a trembling so fierce he found himself unable to hold himself upright. With a loss of feeling he cascaded onto the ground, and with a spattering of repulsive mud he collapsed. Murky brown blotched individually into each strand of green, and despite himself N reached out a hand just as lifeless as the boy he loved.

He couldn't speak.

Milky eyelids drooped closed and blinded him. Stupefied fingers brushed across a cauterized, fisted hand, and pried it away from his chest with a small, sickening crackle. Mentally and diligently he chanted the name, the adjective; he closed in upon himself and let out a juvenilely squeaking breath.

iI won't leave you, Black./i

N's throat siphoned off.

iI promise you./i


End file.
